Communication

Working on Kindness and Civility

/ dwakimoto

Happy Wednesday, dear readers! I hope that your week is going well and that you are having a lovely day. Today I want to discuss briefly a book I’m currently reading, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One that Isn’t by Robert I. Sutton, and how kindness in general seems to be undervalued in many workplaces.

One of my friends and I were discussing how nice it would be to create a company whose primary rule would be that no jerks would be hired or tolerated. Everyone would be expected to be civil and kind to each other. We thought that a nice company is where we would love to work and different than some of our past experiences. Then, a few weeks later, I was browsing in a bookstore and stumbled upon Sutton’s work. I just picked it up from the library and had to share. I know the book has been out for a few years, but it is still worth discussing and I’ll be brief: there are only three things I want to discuss.

  1. Isn’t the title fabulous? The No Asshole Rule. It couldn’t be simpler or easier to understand. There is no ambiguity about the rule or what its intent is. I love it.
  2. Building on the first point, as Sutton wrote, “At the places where I want to work, even if people do other things well (even extraordinary well) but routinely demean others, they are seen as incompetent” (p. 57). I love this point and completely agree. I really don’t care if you are great at your job if you are nasty to others. It puts civility and kindness at the forefront of evaluating our performances, as it should be. Being nice should not be seen as a weakness, but as an imperative.
  3. One of the points that resonates with me is “framing”: “The assumptions and language we use–the lenses that we see the world through–can have big effects on how we treat others” (p. 105). Since part of my research interests lie with studying changes and differences in language, this was familiar territory for me. But much more than that, it is a true, common sense statement. There are many ways to communicate the same basic information that will have vastly different outcomes and affect people in vastly different ways. So the next time you need to communicate something, take a few extra moments to make sure your message is said in such a way that others will be receptive.

So what does this have to do with the library and archives?
We work with and interact with many, many people every day–both in and outside of work. There are just as many chances for positive interactions as negative interactions. Research that Sutton cites has shown, negative experiences carry five times the impact of positive interactions, so we need to be kind and civil to outweigh those negative experiences. Plus, I truly believe that, just as being nasty can be contagious in a group, so too can kindness and civility be contagious. This isn’t insane optimism; we know that we can’t change everyone from being nasty to being kind, but some may change.

We’re all stressed and overworked sometimes and we are serving communities that are feeling economic stress every day. Libraries and archives are already refuges for many and safe spaces to work, research, and be. So let’s all work together to keep them positive spaces, both for ourselves and others.

In one of those wonderful cosmic coincidences, this Free Compliments Poster came through over one of my feeds near the end of last week and was almost too perfect for this post on civility and kindness. I just printed one up and posted it on my office door. Hopefully it will make someone’s day a bit brighter, especially if they take a compliment to share with someone else. So, share compliments freely with others today, watch them smile, and I just know you’ll feel better too.

Finally, I need to give a shout out to my wonderful friends and colleagues who sat in on my seminar on Monday for my doctoral confirmation (both in person and online). You are truly amazing and make even the craziest days bearable. My sincerest thanks, always.

Take care, dear readers. Have a wonderful rest of your day and I’ll be back on Friday with a helping of tech news and goodies for you and your patrons. Allons-y!

Tech Help for Yourself and Others

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday! I hope you are enjoying your Friday and have a lovely weekend planned. Today I want to get back to our regularly scheduled programming of technology tips and advice. I have a bunch of links, lists, and fun bits of information to share with you so that you can share them with others. It’s a round-up of tips for getting more out of your smartphone, figuring out when to buy stuff, and one lovely app from NARA. Allons-y!

Lifehacker has some great articles on smartphones and I want to share a few specifically about Android phones. First is the article on how to speed up your old or sluggish Android device. This seems especially relevant now that it seems that for those who have a Samsung device (in the United States), and haven’t rooted their phone, will be waiting for quite some time to get an OS update. Makes you think twice about rooting and voiding your warranty, doesn’t it? This is also a good article to share with your patrons who complain about their Android device running slowly, but don’t know what can be done about it.

If you haven’t yet succumbed to temptation and purchased an Android phone, you might want to read the article on how to pick your next Android phone: the specs that matter and the ones that don’t. Refuse to be an uninformed consumer of tech goodness.

Now, leaving Android-specific land, check out the tips on how to secure your smartphone. At least make it harder for people to steal your phone and your data.

Also in the realm of security, check out Lifehacker’s enhance your security this weekend article, if you were too busy to deal with this over the holidays. Though I am sure, dear readers, that you already do most of this, but it might be handy to pass on to your library patrons. While enhancing your security, you may also want to look into 6 social media pain points (and what to do about them). Again, good information to share with others.

After you are done enhancing the security of your smartphone, you may want to load the new-ish app from NARA (National Archives and Records Administration). Check out the press release here: Today’s Document Goes Mobile. It is quite lovely and you get one document a day with links to more information, transcripts, the ability to browse collections, etc. Kudos to NARA embracing mobile technology on top of redesigning their website, their logo, their brand, etc.

And because I love lists (and good deals), I had to share this Lifehacker chart/calendar/list on the Best Times to Buy Anything in 2011.

To end our whirlwind tour of technology, enjoy viewing this video using Chameleon Circuit’s “Exterminate, Regenerate” and then go buy one of Chameleon Circuit’s albums over at DFTBA Records.

Have a fantastic rest of your day and a wonderful weekend. I’ll be back next week with more fun in library/archives/tech-land. Thank you, dear readers, for reading.

Presentations, etc.

/ dwakimoto / 1 Comment

Happy Wednesday! It’s a good Wednesday here because my afternoon meeting was canceled, it’s beautifully sunny outside, and we get to talk a little bit about presentations and exciting news. So let’s get to it.

First, if you haven’t read through the presentation on Presentation Tips from The King’s Speech, you really should. Go ahead, click the link. I’ll wait here.

Now, wasn’t that worth reading? And it’s totally true, prepare, practice, get feedback, and find your own voice and you will be fine (although having a built in cheering section at your presentations is also helpful). I think it is incredibly important to keep your own voice when presenting. For example, even though I basically live in academia, I can’t get into the “super-serious professor” mode when presenting. It’s just not who I am and that’s okay. So to me, all presentations are just conversations, more or less, and that helps me with presenting. That and lots and lots of practice. So what helps you prepare for presentations? Any tips are always appreciated as I’m always trying to improve.

And you know the great thing about becoming an awesome presenter? There are so few of them, even though everyone can improve by taking the time to practice and prepare. So if you become a good presenter, people will not only appreciate it, but tell their colleagues and you will get more people coming to your talks. Really. At the last couple of conferences I attended I went to a few sessions not because I was super-interested in the topics, but because I knew the speakers were great. Content matters, but you are only effective at delivering content if you can connect with your audience and that’s where being a good speaker comes in.

Speaking of presentations (and exciting news), for any of you, dear readers, who are coming to the Society of California Archivist’s Annual General Meeting/Conference in San Jose in April, you should leave room in your schedule for a panel presentation that I’ll be chairing. It should be lots of fun (and hopefully useful) and also feature Collin Thorman, probably better known as The Litbrarian, Sherri Berger of the California Digital Library, and Jesse Nachem from the University of California’s Office of the President. We’ll be discussing graduate school, internships, breaking into the profession, among other stuff. At the very least, do stop by and say hello.

Now on to the public service announcement, you’ve probably heard of the horrible flooding affecting Queensland, but you may not have read this great article about Brisbane librarians and how their disaster planning allowed them to save a lot of materials and restore services quickly. There is still a lot of work that needs to be done, but it is good to see a report on how awesome librarians are, especially in times of crisis. Also, if you want to donate to help the flood victims, the government has a donation form for flood relief. And if you are wondering, the library school at Queensland University of Technology was affected as there was flooding on the QUT campus, but everyone (so far as I’ve heard) is okay.

Now, to finish up the day, let’s all take a break and watch “So You Want to be an Academic Librarian” (thanks to @johnxlibris for posting the link!):

Have a great rest of your day and I’ll be back on Friday with some tech and library fun. Allons-y!

Connections and the Digital World

/ dwakimoto / 1 Comment

Happy Friday! I’m so happy it’s Friday, aren’t you? Today I want to share some links about connections, communication, and digital preservation, among other things. Really, it all made sense in my head when I was planning this blog post. So just bear with me and I’ll explain.

It’s no secret that I really enjoy Seth Godin’s blog posts and his post on Lost in a Digital World is a really great one. It is very easy to get lost in a digital world, being constantly in communication, but not communicating or accomplishing anything of substance. I know I have to consciously pull myself away from my computer (and my beloved Android phone) when I’m really working. I can’t multi-task–really, I’m horrible at it. And I think we need quiet headspace to really focus and accomplish things and be present enough to catch on to those fleeting ideas that just might change everything we are doing in our lives.

And, as we all know, the digital pieces of our lives and our communication streams are very fragile–not just in terms of the possibility of misunderstandings via email, but in the very preservation of the datastreams. Just go ask your friendly archivist about digital preservation and watch him/her twitch and start going on about preservation metadata standards (at which point you should offer to take him/her out of the archives and down the street for a nice cup of tea). So, for those who want to do something about preserving their personal digital data, check out Lifehacker’s article, Future-Proof Your Digital Photos with Better Archiving Techniques. Take a night and fix your photos. The archivist in the future who may receive your “papers” will thank you.

After being at one of the talks about technology trends at ALA Midwinter, I found this post from Gizmodo timely: 12 Technologies on the Verge of Extinction. So what technologies do you think will become extinct? It’s something fun to discuss with the archivist whom you’ve taken to tea (see above paragraph). Archivists love to talk about obsolete technologies and media.

Technology is great if used correctly and it can definitely help facilitate communication if used well, but I sometimes worry about getting lost in the busyness of the digital world and also about how digital communication is affecting relationships, or rather the strength or depth of relationships. (I promise no long philosophical argument; it is Friday.) We need more than simply being in constant digital contact with people; we need people who will support us and really mean it when they say, “I’ve Got Your Back.”

You need to have your core group of friends (and no, hundreds of friends on Facebook whom you don’t really know don’t count) who will be your cheering squad, your sounding board, and the ones who will believe in what you are doing when everyone else is calling your ideas crazy. Your task for the weekend is to figure out who has your back and who you would truly back, no matter what. And yes, if I tell you that I’ve got your back, I mean it.

The last bit of hyperlink fun for today is Neil Gaiman’s Another Year from New Year’s Day. Yes, I’m aware that it’s the 14th of January, but it is still a good read and if you somehow missed it, you should go read it. It will make you feel warm and happy. Bonus points for sharing it with someone.

To end and give you a nice break for work today, check out this wonderful Infommercial for the TARDIS (thanks to Hanna for posting the video on her blog):

Have a wonderful day and relaxing weekend. Read a lot, get outside if the weather is nice, and I’ll be back next week with more library, archives, and tech-related goodies.

Reflections on the Gap Between Archivists and Librarians

/ dwakimoto

Happy Wednesday, dear readers. I hope that you are all having a lovely day, whether it is in sunny SoCal or you are enjoying a snow day like my friends in Boston. I am very happy to be back home after a whirlwind tour of San Diego for both the ALISE and ALA Midwinter Conferences. Because I’m still processing everything I’ve learned or experienced at the conferences, I thought I’d talk about just one issue that was quite striking: the gap between archivists and librarians. This theme came up at both of the conferences and I think it deserves to be explored further.

I’ve written previously on the need for librarians to understand what archivists do, and vice versa, but today I want to discuss the communication, or the lack thereof, between the two fields. Communication is key on moving both professions forward and not duplicating each other’s work. This was driven home for me when I was sitting in a session on Top Tech Trends at Midwinter listening to librarians and library vendors discussing trends, a large part of which revolved around digital curation and preservation. I was excited to hear this in a talk about technology, but thought it was a shame that there were no archivists on the panel. Archivists have been wrestling with issues of digital preservation, curation, preservation, access, and authentication for years and it would have been a much more useful discussion if it was between librarians and archivists and not limited to the librarian world.

Now, I’m not saying that this lack of communication can be blamed wholly on the librarians, archivists are just as guilty of staying in their silos. There was actually a discussion about breaking down the silos among archivists, librarians, and museum curators at ALISE which had some defending, rather vigorously, the necessity of maintaining strict boundaries and not having any of this interdisciplinary stuff. On the whole, I find it rather sad and disappointing to see our wonderful professions worrying more about boundaries than figuring out how to work together on issues such as digital preservation.

The lack of communication seems to be leading to duplication of work by archivists and librarians. We don’t need dozens of metadata standards, some used by archivists and some used by librarians, none of which are completely agreed upon. We don’t need to duplicate projects (and we definitely don’t need to create any more crazy initialisms and acronyms). What we need is to first understand each other’s field, actually talk with one another, and then set out solving these digital preservation and curation issues together. Everyone seems to be chronically underfunded these days, so let’s make our limited funds and grants go further by working together instead of competing with each other. Who knows, we might make some progress. Wouldn’t that be great?

Okay, I’m stepping off my soapbox now. Kudos to those of you who are working to break down the barriers between archivists and librarians and working to build up our collaborations and communications. I have great hope for what the professions can do together in the realm of digital preservation and curation.

Today we will be ending with something fun from Doctor Who for three reasons:

  1. Because, as my awesome friend Hanna said, Who wouldn’t want to be at a wedding with the Doctor?
  2. Because another one of my friends has recently finished watching Series 5 and, like Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory, believes that even if there are multiple universes, he will not be dancing in any of them. I’m hoping maybe the Doctor dancing will make him at least consider the possibility he is dancing in at least one of the universes.
  3. It’s Doctor Who, enough said:

Enjoy the rest of your day. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming in a few days. Allons-y!

On being bold and making decisions

/ dwakimoto / 1 Comment

Happy Holidays! As we are nearing the end of another year, I think we need to discuss being bold, making decisions, and keeping resolutions.

So let’s talk about resolutions, since it is that time of year. Intellectually, I completely understand the appeal of making resolutions. To do lists are helpful for focusing on what you want to accomplish and for keeping you on task when there is so much other shiny stuff to look at on the Internet that can derail your best intentions of not procrastinating and really getting whatever it is done this year. Resolutions are also, to me at least, a symbol of optimism that you can actually make the world or yourself (or both) a little better through sheer will and determination. But on the flip side, broken resolutions can fill you with guilt and angst. So is it better to make resolutions and cut yourself slack when you inevitably fall short of perfection? Or is it better to not make resolutions? I don’t have the answer, although I find zen habits rather helpful for living life well and not full of too many lists of things to do.

As for me, I haven’t made any new year’s resolutions for quite a few years now. I might make some this year, who knows. Do you make new year’s resolutions?

But even if you are not into making resolutions for the new year, it is good to resolve to being a person who is bold and willing to make decisions. I was talking with a friend the other day about being the one to make decisions in a group and then read this post from Seth Godin, Just Looking. Sometimes real life and the blogosphere are just in sync; I don’t ask why. So go out there and be bold– actually make a decision. Sitting on the fence doesn’t do you any good and doesn’t move either you or your work or the library forward. Speaking of being bold, check out Engaged Learning’s post, Are You So Bold? Then, go and do whatever you know needs to be done or said that you’ve been putting off. You’ll feel better and it will be easier to be bold the next time you need to be.

So, if you feel like you now need to do something to be bolder in the new year, check out the call for bloggers at Midwinter. If you happen to be going to either ALISE or ALA Midwinter (or even both), do say hello. I’ll be in San Diego for both conferences (probably tweeting and blogging about some of the sessions too). Also, in conference traveling news, check out the TSA Status website to find out the status of the new body scanners at various airports’ checkpoints.

And, because it is that time of year, we must end with a list: check out Lifehacker’s Most Popular Explainers of 2010. We also need something fun, so enjoy a couple of photos of my family’s cats having fun with the wrapping paper…

Cheetah in Wrapping Paper

Cheetah in Wrapping Paper

Fey with Ribbon

Fey with Ribbon

…and an awesome video about the Tenth Doctor and Donna because it is so fun that it must be shared.

Happy New Year, dear readers! I hope it is a fantastic year for you. I’ll be back next week with posts from ALISE. Allons-y!

Lists, Interviews, and Research

/ dwakimoto / 1 Comment

Happy Wednesday! First, congratulations to all the San Jose SLIS students who’ve survived another semester. Enjoy your break! I’m completely enjoying break week here at work because I’m getting so much work done. Plus, dear reader, it has given me the chance to write about more lists and fun stuff. So let’s get right into it, shall we?

I don’t care if you think you don’t care about typography, you must go take a look at this post from I Love Typography, Codex type: the Week in Type. This is one of the most beautiful posts and awesome lists I’ve seen in a while. Makes me just want to design a thousand things instead of finishing up retention dossier.

And, yes, it is the season of lists. Lifehacker has another great list: Most popular photography tips, tricks, and hacks of 2010. This is just perfect timing for all those holiday photos that you just know you’ll be taking when you get together with family and friends. Also, you may want to check out Lifehacker’s most popular DIY projects of 2010 before you meet up with your family and friends because you know DIY projects (and tech support) are almost always on the table when you visit family. Or, at least, they are in my family.

Now for something serious that you should read, take to heart, and share with your patrons: Lifehacker’s article on the main reason why you suck at interviews: lack of preparation. I’ve been talking with friends and interns lately a lot about interviewing and careers and so I think this is a very timely article. Plus, the article speaks the truth–prepare for your interviews! Really. I’m not joking. It’s like a presentation–you don’t try to wing it and you do practice. It takes time and sometimes you feel really silly prepping for an interview, but it is worth it. Before I interviewed for my present position, I did a lot of research about the school, the library, the faculty, the tenure process, etc. I probably looked a little silly at the gym studying books on interviewing techniques and statistics on the school while on the elliptical trainer, but it paid off during the interview. I felt confident that I knew what I was talking about and could actually ask intelligent questions. So practice and prepare.

Okay, I’m off my soapbox and think that we must end with a couple of fun bits because it is the holiday season after all.

First: for those living in the Bay Area, Saturn Cafe is now in Berkeley! This is so exciting for those of us addicted to Saturn Cafe’s yummy veggie food, but sadly no longer live close to the original Saturn Cafe in Santa Cruz. Really, you need to go try the Saturn Cafe. Have the nachos, you won’t be sorry.

Second: you know we have to end with a funny video. So here is Simon’s Cat in ‘Santa Claws.’ Even if you’ve seen it before give yourself a 2 minute and 13 second break and watch it again. You’ll smile and smiling is good for you.

Have a great rest of your day. I’ll be back on Friday with more library, tech, and holiday fun. Thanks for reading.

Time, Education, Design, and Social Media

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday! And it is a super-happy Friday on campus because classes are over and once we survive finals week (next week), we have holiday break! That is definitely cause for celebration. So in honor of surviving yet another quarter, let’s talk about time, education, design, and social media.

One seemingly cannot escape hearing about social media and social media marketing on a daily basis. WebWorkerDaily had a great article discussing How much time does social media marketing take? The answer is, of course, it depends on what you are doing and what you want to accomplish. I highly recommend keeping the graphics from this article on hand to explain social media marketing the next time someone brings it up in a meeting. It’s a nice graphic and it reminds people that, while you might not have to “pay” for accounts on a lot of social media sites, you have to invest time.

This discussion of social media marketing brings up another issue that I hear about a lot from my colleagues: how to learn to use social media. I don’t think I’ve quite gotten across the idea that one can’t just read about social media or take a course to understand how to use social media effectively in a library or academic setting. (I also have yet to convince some people that they shouldn’t wait for a journal article to tell you how to use social media; at that point it’s a little late. Go to the blogs and Twitter and everything will be okay.) It’s like trying to explain Twitter–doesn’t really make sense until you sign up and start tweeting with other people.

Design, like understanding social media, is learned by doing and not just reading about it (although studying successful examples is always a good thing too). It’s like archival processing. I can talk to you until my voice gives out about the standards and protocols for processing a collection, but you’ll only be able to truly understand once I sit you down with an unprocessed collection and let you muddle around for a bit. The lovely, tidy picture of archival processing that is written in the textbooks is nothing like the messy, sometimes moldy, collections you encounter in the archives. In all three cases, practice might not make perfect but it is the way you’ll actually be able to do anything useful with what you’ve read.

On that note, there have been some rather excellent posts and discussions lately on education and the necessity of higher education in particular. (But we are not, dear reader, going to contribute more to the messy dialog about the need for graduate level education in library and archival science. At least, not today.) I obviously believe in the value and importance of higher education since I work in academia. But I don’t believe that higher education is the only path, or even the best path, to take for acquiring knowledge in every instance. I find it especially interesting to read about what other people think about the necessity of higher education for careers in emerging and creative fields. I highly recommend this read on Design and Education, if nothing else, you should enjoy the clean design of the website and Harry’s lovely portfolio of work. Also, if you are interested in the process of design, I suggest reading the messiness of design. And when you get to actual design time for your website, check out what your web design says about you. Isn’t design fun?

I guess all I’m really trying to say is don’t be afraid of wandering a bit on your own and muddling through learning new things. You don’t need to spend a lot of money to learn about web design and social media marketing when there are so many awesome people online who share their work and expertise because sharing ideas generates more ideas (as yesterday’s This is Indexed showed us). So get out there and learn something new. Then be nice and share your knowledge and experience with others.

To end, we must have a video. Because Season 5 of the new Doctor Who is out on DVD (and I finally got to watch the first episodes), we need to end with the Doctor. This video is slightly spoiler-y for episode 1, so you have been warned. Enjoy some of the Doctor’s awesomeness.

Have a wonderful rest of your day and relaxing weekend. Don’t get too caught up in the holiday madness–save some time for reading. I’ll be back next week with more fun things to share.

Web Typography and Other Geeky Fun

/ dwakimoto

Hello, dear readers. I know I’m a bit late in publishing this post. I’m sorry, but I plead illness as my excuse and hopefully you’ll find something in today’s bag of geeky fun useful and that will absolve me from the horror of not posting on a Friday. Anyway, as the good doctor would say, Allons-y!

It’s probably fairly obvious by now, but I have a weakness for good design and lovely typography. I’m, not surprisingly, very happy with Smashing Magazine lately for all their wonderful resources on typography, especially this round-up of 100 educational resources, tools and techniques for web typography. Get ready to drool if you have an appreciation for well-designed fonts and layouts.

Speaking of fonts, something else that is fun to play with is WhatFontis.com. Upload an image of a font you can’t identify and (with any luck) WhatFontis will be able to identify it for you. Yes, I know, this could be very, very bad because you might spend hours playing with this site. Don’t say I haven’t warned you.

In other useful, geeky news, check out this article from The Atlantic on taking care of your personal archives. What can I say? I get excited whenever an interview with an archivist gets published in something other than Archival Outlook. Read it and then get cracking on backing-up, remounting, and otherwise taking care of your personal archives.

In other super-important news, today is the 12th Annual International Transgender Day of Remembrance. Please go over to the Future Feminist Librarian-Activist’s site and read Anna’s thoughtful post for today.

In other, not nearly as important, but good for some weekend relaxation and enjoyment news, I have to share with you Joy the Baker’s vegan pumpkin walnut bread recipe. It is superb and makes two giant loaves of bread–perfect for when you find out your new intern is vegan and none of your standard baking recipes are anywhere close to being vegan (just saying). Also, just on the off chance you missed it last week, here’s a link to Stephen Abram’s Geek cred post.

And if you missed part 1 of John Green’s explanation of the French Revolution, or want to see parts 2 & 3, head over to Hanna’s blog where she has posted all of them.

As for me, my pick for a video this week is John Green’s video about his latest trip to Amsterdam because I know a lot of people will be traveling soon for Thanksgiving and will probably be able to empathize with John’s experiences with airports and flights. Enjoy.

Have a lovely weekend, rest, relax, and read (and don’t catch a cold; it’s no fun). See you next week for more tech, library, and archival fun!

Discourses and Conversations

/ dwakimoto / 1 Comment

Happy Wednesday! I hope your day is going well because, to be truthful, the last few Wednesdays around my neck of the woods have been not very nice. Apparently, according to a friend, Wednesdays must be my good karma blackout days (kind of like frequent flier mile blackout days) since honestly, I just haven’t been able to catch a break. But I’m hoping today will be better and thought I’d share some thoughts in order to solicit some feedback on discourses and conversations because conversation always makes the day better. (And if you are only reading The Waki Librarian for libraries and technology, not to worry, we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled, nerdy fun on Friday.)

So this idea for a post came about during a two hour webinar I was recently in. And, for the record, I agree with everyone on Twitter who tweeted that webinar is a horrible word. It is. But, moving on, during the conversation one of the people made an argument that academic discourse is completely separate from discourse that occurs via Twitter, blogs, and other assorted social media. Furthermore, he said that is how it should be. Now, obviously, for anyone who has been reading this blog for any length of time probably can tell, this irked me. So I thought, hey, I’ll see what other people have to say about this matter.

For me, yes, there are differences between academic discourse and professional discourse that occurs via social media, but that doesn’t mean that there can’t and shouldn’t be overlap between the two discourses. I’m an academic and do quite a bit of research and writing in the formal, traditional academic model. It’s a very important discourse. Research is important for producing the kind of quality evidence available to use as a basis for decision-making and to further develop theory and models in our field. It is important to be able to write your results up in an article in such a way that it withstands peer-review and can be used as a credible source. No one, I think, would deny that. But it doesn’t do one lick of good just sitting in an article that few people will ever read–especially in our field which is an applied, practical, professional field. Keeping an academic discourse cloistered is silly and inhibits good ideas from spreading. I adore the intellectual stimulation of academia (and the excuse to do research), but I really don’t enjoy the concept (and practice) of academia as a world and conversation set apart from every other conversation happening in our field.

At this point, one ignores conversations facilitated by social media at one’s peril. Many bloggers, especially in the information science field, write amazingly thoughtful posts about current practice and research. I love hearing about new research articles from various blog and Twitter feeds. I have more conversations (on the whole) via this non-academic discourse than I have in academic discourses. And it is a wonderful feeling to be a part of a larger, vibrant librarian and archivist community and to learn from so many awesome people. I think the Web 2.0, social media, whatever new buzzword you want to use, community conversations can and should then influence academic discourses and research, especially in the realm of applications of technology and teaching which is one of my areas of interest. Also, it would be an error to ignore the previously cloistered academic conversations that are now coming to the web via open access projects, digital humanities projects and numerous public history projects. It’s a great big hodgepodge of overlapping, conflicting, synergistic, and even inspiring conversations happening every day online. (It makes my postmodernist, poststructuralist heart happy. Just think of all the dynamic, fluctuating discourses and evolving language usage to study!)

So what conversations interest you? What do you think about the academic and professional discourse divides? How do you integrate the various aspects of your research and practice in your work and life?

I promise, I’m off my soapbox now, but I’d really love to hear how you think the various conversations in our field interrelate, or should interrelate. I’d love to continue the conversation. And now, since we’ve been talking so much about conversations, education, and learning from each other, I thought it only appropriate to leave you with the first installment of the Vlogbrothers’ educational video week. Enjoy John Green discussing the French Revolution (I love that he says “competing historical narratives” during the introduction–yes I am that big of a nerd, enjoy the video anyway.)

I’ll be back on Friday with our regular assortment of technology and library fun.